The World A.T. Ways

Posted By Kevin Gaugler on October 1, 2008

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As someone from the pre-keyboarding era who took typing classes on an electric typewriter in high school, I pride myself on the fact that I can burn through a healthy number of words-per-minute with my fingers placed properly on the keys. This becomes more challenging however when writing in a language other than English, since entering international characters can vary depending on whether you use a Mac or a PC or if you are on a laptop or on a desktop. The method of entering diacritical marks can even differ depending on whether you are using Microsoft Word or Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is why any person who regularly types in multiple languages will rejoice when they master the ability to customize the Firefox browser. Firefox eliminated a lot of diacritical frustration for me. Please, let me explain.

What makes the Firefox browser particularly valuable to educators are it’s “add-ons“. These are little plug-in programs that enhance the functionality of the browser. Such specialized extensions are built by volunteers who see a need for a niche function that not every user will find useful. You can therefore customize your browsing experience based on the way you view the online world. If you happen to be in the “niche” of speaking more than one language, for example, you might want to write email or search in two or more languages. One extension I found incredibly useful was one that allowed me to easily input specialized characters. For those of us who use Windows, it can be challenging to conduct searches in languages other than English without an international keyboard and the short-cut keys that work in Microsoft Word don’t apply to Internet Explorer. With a Firefox extension called ZombieKeys, however, one can enter accents and umlauts with the same key combinations as with Microsoft Word, so that writing email and searching Google in multiple European languages can be done with ease. A myriad of other add-ons also exist for non-western languages such as the Indic Input extension that supports Inscript and WX layout in Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarathi, Gurmukhi, Oriya, Malayalam, Nepali, Kannada and Hindi.

Enthusiasts of world languages should especially note that an entire section of the Firefox add-on library is dedicated to language support and another entirely to dictionaries and language packs. One can install the Italian spellchecking dictionary, for instance, so that any word misspelled in Italian in the browser window will be highlighted. To become better acquainted with the ever-growing tail of Firefox, watch this short video from the 5 minute Life Videopedia. Please share your favorite Firefox extensions with us! Please let us know how you are enhancing your browser experience around languages, teaching and learning. What are your favorite extensions and how to does it better your life as an instructor or a student?

Categories: Mass-Customization
Tags: diacritical, extensions, Firefox, languages